Retreat From London To A Houseboat

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31256, 31 December 1966, Page 2

Retreat From London To A Houseboat

Come the week-end or a public holiday and Londoners pour out of the city in a stream of outward-bound traffic that is sometimes as dense as the 6 p.m. snarl in Trafalgar square.

They head for a cottage in the country, a tent by a stream or a crib at the seaside. They call these retreats their “bolt-holes.”

Now, a steady trickle of motorists is beginning to veer away from the tensions of main highways to lanes that lead to a river any river where a houseboat may be moored. Houseboats are “in.”

Two of the capital’s most enthusiastic “river people” are the Archdeacon of London (the Ven. Martin Sullivan) and Mrs Sullivan. Their boat (the Akaroa) is named after the Banks Peninsula resort where they had a week-end house when Archdeacon Sullivan was Dean of Christchurch. It is moored at an island on the Thames river, near Hampton Court

Only 45 minutes’ drive from London, it is near enough to make for on any sunny day that happens to have a blank in their appointment books—free week-ends are rare. “We rock gently when the river traffic goes by, but that is the only movement we get,” Mrs Sullivan said. That is the charm of houseboats; they never drift out of calm waters.

The Akaroa came their way by chance. “We were looking for a week-end cottage,” Mrs Sullivan said. “Martin was browsing through the personal column of “The Times’ one day and noticed that a houseboat was for sale. He literally tripped over it When we saw the boat we bought it immediately.” The 40ft craft has a small kitchen equipped with a refrigerator and an electric stove. There is a small sit-ting-room with a vista of parklands across the river, a sun porch in the bow and plenty of ducks to feed. "It is just what we needed for taking the odd break,” she said.

In the busy life that emanates from St. Paul’s Cathedral,

where Archdeacon Sullivan is stationed, a day off may come at short notice and a trip to the river needs no particular planning. Though Mrs Sullivan has no parish commitments St. Paul’s as a cathedral has no church organisations—she has plenty to do. Entertaining is almost a full-time job. When Archdeacon Sullivan is in residence at St. Paul’s he invites any young people at his 6.30 p.m. Sunday service home to No. 9 Amen court for supper. Supper Parties Providing biscuits and coffee for these supper parties has to be done by guess. “I always keep my fingers crossed that there will be more than five and fewer than 500,” she said. “We never know who will come.”

Many New Zealanders have been to these multi-racial, international “get-togethers.” Most of the guests, whether they come from the West Indies or only 100 miles from London, are new to the city. Their home is usually a bedsitter in a block of brick rooming-houses, where everyone else is too busy with his own affairs to say more than “hello” to a stranger.

At No. 9 Amen court, they find the warmth of the Sullivans’ welcome and meet people of their own age. “Life can be very lonely and very impersonal for the young when they first come to London,” Mrs Sullivan said. Gas Lamp No. 9 Amen court is a 20roomed Victorian brick house in a cluster of nine, built round three sides of a garden courtyard. Over the entrance porch is a gaslamp lit by a lamplighter every evening. Three of the houses round the courtyard were built by Wren, after he completed nearby St Paul’s Cathedral. All the houses were put up by cathedral chapters as homes for staff. Older even than the Wren houses is the stone, back boundary fence—or at least the part which incorporates a piece of the original London wall.

Many of the street names in the locality of St Paul’s go back to monastery days and indicate the Procession of the Office, such as Creed lane, Ave Maria lane, Paternoster place and Amen court. From this little pocket of English church history, Mrs Sullivan goes out most days to meetings of organisations which carry on the church’s work in a modern metropolis She is president of the City Clergy Wives, which draws membership from 32 city churches in the square mile of London.

A board member of All Saints’ College (a church

teacher-training college at Tottenham) Mrs Sullivan is also on the committee for the London City District Nursing Association. Drama Interest With her life-long interest in the amateur and professional theatre, she was a natural for the office of president of the Paternoster Players. A few months ago, this local group staged T. S. Eliot’s "Murder in the Cathedral” in the church of St. Bartholomew the Great at Smithfield, near Cheapside where Thomas Becket lived.

“It was produced by Pamela Barnard as a fringe event for this year’s London Festival and was a huge success,” she said.

Mrs Sullivan, who founded the Christchurch Religious Drama Society, has been invited by the Religious Drama Society of Great Britain to start another group in London.